Civil Beat Topics

Ben Cayetano

Ben Cayetano, a Democrat, was the fifth governor of Hawaii, serving from 1994 to 2002. He was the first Filipino-American to rise to the level of governor in any U.S. state.

Cayetano ran for Honolulu mayor in the 2012 elections and lost to Kirk Caldwell. Cayetano received 45 percent of vote while Caldwell received 53 percent. Cayetano’s platform centered on stopping the Honolulu rail project from proceeding, and pro-rail factions — most notably the Pacific Resource Partnership, a Carpenters’ Union affiliate — spent millions to defeat him. PRP ran attack ads that have been widely viewed as one of the most negative campaigns in Hawaii history. Cayetano filed a defamation lawsuit against PRP and in 2014 the organization settled the case by publicly apologizing and, at Cayetano’s request, donating more than $100,000 to charities chosen by the former governor.

Cayetano was born Nov. 14, 1939. He grew up in Kalihi, graduated from Farrington High School and eventually got a degree from University of California Los Angeles. He later went to Loyola Law School in California and returned to Hawaii to enter local politics as a Democrat.

He served in the Hawaii House of Representatives, then in the state Senate, then as lieutenant governor to Gov. John Waihee. He bested Republican Pat Saiki and former Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi, running as an independent, in the 1994 election. In 1998, he narrowly edged Republican Linda Lingle, who succeeded Cayetano as governor in 2002 after he was term-limited out of office.

Cayetano’s lieutenant governor was Mazie Hirono.

Cayetano is a vocal opponent of the Honolulu rail project. He is among the plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging the project’s environmental documents, claiming that rail planners did not adequately consider alternatives and violated federal law. The city eventually prevailed in that lawsuit and Cayetano and the other plaintiffs decided not to appeal.

Hawaii’s remarkable ethnic and racial diversity and the social tension that comes with it is the subject of a new Connections thread. Who better to kick off that discussion than a man who has worked through it all?